I’ve always kinda felt like I’m not enough of a Neil Gaiman fan. I love love love Neverwhere, and I liked the Sandman comics. Everything else I’ve been kind of meh about. I feel like a bad geek! The Graveyard Book might change my mind, though. This book made me wish I had three-hour lunchbreaks and no bedtime. I was tremendously anxious to find out what happened next at every step of the way, but I didn’t want it to end.
Nobody Owens is a little boy growing up in a graveyard. His family was murdered when he was a baby, and the ghosts took him in, raising him and protecting him from the man who wants to finish the job of wiping out the family. Nobody, or Bod for short, has been given the Freedom of the Graveyard, which means he can see in the dark, cause Hauntings, and do other interesting tricks the living usually can’t manage. He has parents, the long-deceased Owens, and is friends with the rest of the inhabitants of the old cemetery, which is now a nature preserve. His guardian, Silas, is a mysterious figure who lives in a crypt and sleeps on dirt imported from his homeland and only goes out at night. Ahem. Silas can leave the graveyard, and brings Bod food and books and other things a growing boy needs.
Once the stage is set, the story continues with Bod tackling thorny issues like friendship, growing up, fitting in, what it means to be alive, and how to deal with the stranger who wants him dead. Bod has been surrounded by perfectly nice dead people since his earliest memories, so he has no fear of death – no fear of much, really. This brave little boy faces down murderers, ghouls, school bullies (when he briefly attempts to attend a real live school), and creepy Things that live in the ancient crypt beneath the hill.
In the future, when people gush about Gaiman, this is the book I will picture. With this one, I get it. Bod was fantastic, as were the supporting characters. The adventures are suspenseful and interesting. The ending actually made me a little teary. Neverwhere‘s still my favorite, but this was damn good.